2019 MURAL PROJECT ARTISTS:
AARON BEST
I was born in Orange County, California but my family moved out to Colorado when I was 2. My earliest exposure to art came in the form of doodles and sketches I would work on in class. I became more interested in art in high school through taking AP classes and through my own exploration of digital art in the form of Photoshop and Illustrator. By the end of senior year I decided that visual art should be more than just a hobby and began exploring the possibility of a career artist. I entered the University of Northern Colorado in 2014 for a Bachelor’s in Fine Art. The time I was in college was spent mostly working in my own studio and hanging out with other like minded artists. I spent time working on solo and group shows, outdoor events, and public murals all while balancing classes. It was a stage of rapid development in my life that ultimately left me feeling burnt out. I decided to take a break from pursuing a degree and focus my attention elsewhere. I always knew I would go back and finish my degree and after a year and a half I decided it was time. I began attending the Colorado University of Denver in 2019 but not for a degree in visual art, but for Architecture. I knew architecture would be a good fit for me as it would allow me to develop my skills as an artist while also fusing those interests into a related field. Much of what I’ve learned as an artist has helped lead my design process. Overall, art has opened a lot of doors for me and continues to be an inseparable part of my character.
AEROSE
Aerose (Julia Morgan) is a local street artist whose public art practice is built around empowerment, self-actualization and emancipation of the viewer through creative enhancement of their communities. Her art reveals the wildness that simmers beneath the civilized exteriors of today’s humanity, emphasizing our connectedness to each other and environment through internal landscapes that blend imagination and waking reality. By merging nature and impalpable psychic territories through paint, intention and manifestation of our deepest dreams and most secret thoughts can be brought to visual fruition and given space to breathe and grow. Aerose utilizes spray paint on many large-scale projects, as it is an optimal medium to explore the themes of ephemera and permanency demonstrated in her work, while being efficient, archival and weather resilient. Aerose’s murals interrupt and add to passerby's daily experience by providing colorful windows into alternate realities, encouraging contemplation and inspiration. Aerose’s work seeks to envelope the mind and gaze of the viewer in the same way that we are held by feeling, each other and the cradling universe within which we dwell, allowing the viewer to exist in the spaces between mind and matter, dreams and reality. Art unites, empowers and transcends all illusions of separation, and has the capacity to truly alter minds and societies-- this is the main impetus behind Aerose's creations!
ALEO
Abram (ALEO) is a painter and muralist born in Colorado. He is especially intrigued by the combination of digital imagery with intuitive mark-making. His work strives to build a bridge between the endless capacity for revisions with a computer and a pure human condition of permanence.
A.L. GRIME
Ally Grimm (A.L. Grime) is an illustrator, painter, and muralist based out of Denver, CO. She is fascinated by the way in which humans process emotion and communicate. She seeks to explore the bridge between man and machine by breaking down emotion into patterns that reflect art through the lens of technology.
ARMANDO SILVA
Armando Silva is a painter, muralist, and performer who uses his artistic superpowers to tell powerful stories, build community, and inspire youth through art.
Armando was born in Sombrerete, Zacatecas, Mexico. At age 5, his family moved to Northern Colorado to pursue the American Dream, and Armando submerged himself into visual and performing arts as a way to communicate and find his identity as an ESL student. After developing his talents throughout high school, he decided to invest in them and received a BA in Fine Arts from The University of Northern Colorado.
Armando believes his artistic abilities come with the responsibility to lead, educate, and give back to the community. His artistic practice focuses on compelling portraits that tell personal stories, sometimes created on canvases in his studio, or other times created through live performance in front of thousands. Armando's large-scale mural installations give communities a way to communicate messages that can't always be said in words.
Armando currently lives in Greeley, Colorado and is deeply embedded in creative leadership throughout the community.
BENJAMIN STANFORD
My name is Benjamin Stanford, and I am a figurative painter currently living and working in Fort Collins, Colorado. Growing up in Colorado Springs, I found an early love for art, going on to complete my Fine Art education at Colorado State University. My work focuses primarily on figurative content with surrealist elements of color, space, and composition. By taking inspiration from the Old Masters, I uses painting as a process through which tradition and craftsmanship can serve as a touchstone for the creative process; allowing for self-imposed constraints to serve as a catalyst for problem solving. I always aim to strikes a balance between deliberate rendering of form and intuitive response. This provides a space where academic considerations can run parallel with an open-ended process of translation.
BROOKE ANDERSON
I am a Colorado native and have been creating since 2003. My work aims to represent that moment you pause to smile or stop to think because I provoked a thought. I want to spread joy and education through my work. The joy piece part is smiley faces, reminding people to stop and smile more. The other half of my work illustrates statistics of contemporary oppression using data to tell a story through art. My art is used in a cultural context that reflect current statistics. I find that producing symmetry in my work is therapeutic and I choose to represent data in the form of circles. I simply want people to spread happiness and connect as humans below the surface when you look at my artwork.
CHRISTOPHER WARREN
Christopher Warren was born and raised in Colorado, and has been creating topographic art as Beatnik Prints for six years. He enjoys creating art from topographic maps in the forms of murals, sculptures, clothing, prints, animation, and probably more ways than are really necessary. His dog Elliott is pretty awesome.
CONNER HERBISON
Conner Herbison is an illustrator and comic book artist having worked for publishers like IDW and Dark Horse. He’s currently living in Fort Collins, CO. and has a son named Eggs Benedict, who is a cat.
DAN TORO
Wyoming native Dan Toro worked as a trim carpenter while seeking his long awaited piece of paper from the University of Wyoming. The techniques and values of wood working, oil painting and printmaking have shaped the way he creates images today. Dan’s interest in street art and the voice that it has most likely came out of his early influences in punk rock music and graffiti stencil culture. Unrealized at the time, each one was leading Dan in the direction of large-scale works. For the past 8 years Dan has been painting murals around the states.
Dan is part of many mural projects and teaches spray paint courses in his own community. He has been involved in many group and solo exhibitions. Dan was one of the 2016 Pabst Blue Ribbon mural competition winners. He has done private commissioned work for Haden Outdoors Realestate Development, HB Reality, Regal Theaters and other patrons. Dan has also been a part of the 3rd Annual West Colfax Muralfest and was the 2nd place winner for Richmond Festival of Murals and the South Salt Lake Muralfest.
DANIEL CROSIER
Daniel Crosier is a graduate of RMCAD in 2000 with a BFA in sculpting. He has formed and performed in his neo-kabuki group OFM from 2003-2011. Crosier is a comic book writer/illustrator as well as a filmmaker from 2006 to current. He is the co-founder of DiNK Denver Comics and Art Expo and COFOH the Colorado Festival of Horror. He has been painting murals since 2016.
DANIELLE DeROBERTS
Originally from N.Y. and San Francisco, CA- Danielle DeRoberts (Onerary) is a full time artist and collaborator :: painting, drawing, textiles, graphic design + art installation, currently residing in Telluride, CO. Danielle’s unique technique of embroidering into her paintings, back lighting and extending them onto walls, creates textured pieces that spring to life--- transforming the two-dimensional paintings into three-dimensional installations. Through her art, Danielle desires to create a space where the audience feels welcome to be completely themselves. Her paintings are dream like vessels for her to communicate and she hopes her own creative expression will inspire the viewer to connect with their own soul voice.
FAITH JOHNSON
Faith Johnson is a FOCO local artist that’s eager to open closed portals by painting new perspectives. Born in LOVEland, Colorado, she has worked diligently to maintain a livelihood by loving what she does, doing what she loves, and reclaiming her own business of Art. Illustration, painting, prop-design, and curation has solidified her creative process and continues to embrace her own inner abnormalities.
KYLA NOVAK
Kyla Novak is a multi-disciplinary artist, a certified K-12 art educator, and has a BFA from Colorado State University. She comes from a background in graphic design, illustration, hand lettering, photography, metalsmithing, fiber art and printmaking. Kyla believes in putting creativity out into the world everyday. She is challenged by working in a limited color palette, minimalist shape, and the process of continuous line drawings. Lately, Kyla has been exercising artistic discipline through observation and intentional use of the basic elements of art such as shape, line, texture, color and pattern. She is inspired by the contrast of movement and stillness, a myriad of artists, art media, objects, and textiles. A few influences include art historical figures such as Schiele, Modigliani, and Harper. Modern influences include Paula Scher, Lisa Congdon, Margaret Kilgallen and Alanna Cavanagh. Along with the Fort Collins Mural Project, past exhibitions and recent artistic accomplishments include the “Practice What You Teach” Art Educators of Northern Colorado Show at the Loveland Museum Gallery in Loveland, Colorado and the Bad Broad Collective “Honey” Show at the Art Lab in Fort Collins, Colorado; featured artist during the 2018 season of Pianos About Town in Fort Collins, Colorado; the group exhibition, “CSU Fine Artists” in Castiglion Fiorentino, AR, Italy; and locally in Fort Collins, Colorado at First Friday Art Walks and other markets.
LAURA GROSSETT
Laura teaches printmaking and drawing at Front Range Community College. She was the founder of the former print co-operative, Mad Deer Press and has exhibited work across the country.
LINDEE ZIMMER
Follow textures, lines and scattered stripes, and dive into the imagination; Lindee’s art stems from the colors of tropical birds, the cracks in the walls she draws her murals, energy of the universe that connects us. She draws inspiration off the patterns in leaves, she paints the vibrations of love, she sketches the frivolous buoyancy that brought us all to search for art in the first place. Anyway, make yourself at home, you are part of it now.
Lindee was born in Colorado and currently lives in Denver. She has been a public artist for over 6 years, she loves collaboration, optical illusions and is a teacher and forever student.
MAX COLEMAN
Max Coleman is a visual artist who began his life on the wooded shores and cliffs of Connecticut. Graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015, his work seeks to take the elements and techniques used by artists of centuries past, and apply them to the modern day medias of digital illustration and street art. Combining a love for poetry and conservation his work melds with his imagination and love of the natural world. Thus, it is able to sit comfortably in the present while at the same time harkening the viewer back to a time when the written word and drawn image were man’s only way to capture and share the beauty of earth.
MICHAEL ORTIZ
Michael generally focuses on doing large scale production, murals, street art, hard edge graphics, and progressive use of mixed media’s. “ILLSON” as he is best known is born and raised in Colorado and has been a working artist in Denver, CO for nearly two decades. His many works can be viewed all around Denver and certain parts of the U.S. and internationally. More can be viewed at michaelortizart.com.
MIKE McPUFF
Fort Collins based artist Mike McPuff, has an eye catching colorful style that can be seen as murals, clothing, digital designs and canvas paintings. McPuff is a life long artist, but found his signature style around 2014. In 2017 McPuff transitioned to becoming a full time freelance artist, focusing on digital designs for musicians and small businesses using social media platforms. McPuff has several murals along the front range, including Fort Collins and Loveland. For more info about Mike McPuff, visit MikeMcPuff.com .
NOELLE MILLER
Noelle Miller is an abstract painter living and working in Colorado. Her work stems from an interest in emotion and the manifestation of energy within everyday life. Recently, her works have been focusing specifically on the idea of memory and feelings of nostalgia. She is consistently drawn to moments in life considered to be “mundane” or “in between” moments. These quiet and often private moments are always what she remembers most from different periods of life. By recreating these memories through abstract painting, she is attempting to focus her attention on being present. Large swatches of color build a platform for the telling of these stories. Delicate lines, textures and clouds of color create a language of what is remembered in contrast with where moments of these memories lapse.
PATRICK MAXCY
PATRICK MAXCY IS A PAINTER, MURALIST, ADVENTURER AND HUMANITARIAN.]
Patrick was born and raised in Florida, where the ocean became a source of inspiration for his art work. Drawing from his personal experiences and the places he has traveled to, Patrick highlights nature as a prominent force in the stories he tells in his paintings. Patrick studied painting at Florida School of the Arts and Florida Atlantic University. While at FAU he also received his teaching certificate and upon graduating began teaching high school art classes.
In addition to painting, Patrick has become known for his humanitarian work. He’s partnered with non-profit organizations to help communities fight economic instability and poverty in North America, South America and Africa. Humanitarian work has provided Patrick with the opportunity to share joy through his art. In Jinja, Uganda Patrick painted five murals at schools and other buildings. He has also been painting murals in Nicaragua for 11 years. Patrick has also used his talents as a painter to raise money for scholarships, cancer patients and ocean conservation. In 2016, Patrick was chosen as the Guest Artist of the Year for the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards. That year he was also nominated for the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, an international humanitarian award.
In 2018, Patrick completed a month-long artist residency in Homer, Alaska with Cook Inletkeeper. Several of Patrick’s marine-life murals can now be seen throughout the town. In the same year Patrick’s mural in historic downtown Littleton, Colorado was voted as the best public art display. Patrick has done projects for many organizations and companies such as RedBull, Ocearch, Pangeaseed and Nike. Patrick’s work has been featured in publications such as Relevant, Scientific American and World Artist Network. When Patrick isn’t traveling he can be found working at his studio in the mountains of Colorado, where he currently resides.
ZACH SLIVE KEISS
Zach Slive Keiss, is a Colorado native and a recent graduate from The Art Institute of Colorado of the Graphic & Web Design program. From an early age he has always shared a passion from graffiti/ street art. Using 80's & 90's inspired design elements, Zach paints other worldly, trippy works of art.
ZOE LeDONNE
Zoë LeDonne was born in California and raised in Fort Collins, Colorado. She received a BFA in Painting and a BS in Biological Sciences from Colorado State University.
Her work focuses on telling visual narratives and visualizing emotional turmoil through symbolism associated with natural objects and animals. Even though different plants or animals may have different symbolic meanings (because of cultural differences or personal beliefs), the objects will guide the viewers to connect with the characters in her pieces to form narratives that go beyond the visual aesthetics of the work.